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Vampire
Vampires are a supernatural species, corpses reanimated by supernatural forces and inhabited by the spirit of the deceased person in question. Physiology The emotions of vampires are far more intense than the emotions of humans. Anger, depression, happiness, love, sadness, etc. are more powerful and much more overwhelming than when they were a living human. This explains why newborn vampires are easily annoyed and angered; due to their unsettling feelings, they will continue to have mood swings until they adjust to their new emotions. Physically, vampires have human forms, although their canine teeth elongate into fangs when they feed; and, because their bodies are technically deceased, they can be characterized by their lack of heartbeat as well as lack of body heat. If a vampire fails to regularly drink blood, their body will become severely weakened, and will ultimately desiccate into mummification until they are able to get blood into their system. |-|Creation= Virtually all vampires were originally humans who were converted into vampires. In order for a human to become a vampire, they must die within 24 hours of consuming vampire blood. The nature of the human's death is irrelevant; however, the body must be preserved and able to function upon reanimation. If the human is killed by decapitation, fire or corrosives, damage to or removal of the heart, or excessive loss of body mass, reanimation will not occur. Upon physical death, the magic of the vampire blood prevents the spirit from leaving its corpse, causing the undead body to awaken in a state of transition. In order to complete the transition, the pre-vampire must consume a significant amount of fresh human blood within the next 24 hours or else he or she will die permanently. |-|Nature= Vampires have the capacity to be extremely feral, predatory creatures, and can be more beast-like and savage than their human appearance suggests. They growl, hiss, snarl, and curl their lips back when provoked, baring their fangs as a sign of aggression when faced by a threat. Despite their nature, vampires are also capable of human emotions, such as compassion, love, and self-control. However, it's in a vampire's nature to be violent, and no matter what their morality or kindness, they will almost always resort to such acts if it's necessary for their survival. While vampires typically maintain their human personalities after their transformations (though magnified by the magical properties of vampirism), they are usually dehumanized to some degree, and due to both the violent tensions between witches, werewolves, and vampires, violence, tragedy, and death of the aforementioned groups and humans caught in the crossfire seem to follow vampires wherever they go, even despite their best efforts to avoid it. Many (though not all) vampires are inherently selfish and consider other beings, especially humans, to be inferior to themselves, as they see themselves as the top of the proverbial food chain. Even the most compassionate of their kind will often resort to cruelty and torture if it means protecting themselves and their loved ones from danger. However, vampires experience sensations and feelings much more intensely than humans, and as a result, they have a much more difficult time controlling their emotions, all of which are tied to their hunger in some way. Whenever a vampire is overwhelmed by powerful feelings (such as extreme hunger, fear, anger, happiness, love, etc.) their faces become pale, and blood rushes into the veins surrounding their eyes, darkening them tremendously. Their canine teeth will lengthen into fangs, giving them a more predatory look to scare off or threaten their prey and to aid them in feeding on humans and animals. This intensification of emotions experienced by vampires also extends to their personalities as well, both the good and the bad aspects of it. Another function of the vampire nature is the ability to "turn off" their humanity in order to make it easier for them to emotionally deal with feeding on (and occasionally even killing) humans to maintain their immortality. described the process as "flicking a switch," which essentially numbs their emotions and disables their ability to be empathetic, allowing them to shut out painful feelings such as guilt, grief, and sadness and turning off the part of them that makes them ashamed of their actions. Vampires with their humanity turned off often think of themselves as purely rational and logical and are not ruled by their emotions. They also have no problem feeding indiscriminately on whomever they please, either using mind compulsion to make the humans forget the experience or killing them outright with no shame or remorse. |-|Society & Culture= Many vampires are nomads of sorts who periodically move around from place to place to make sure their immortality and lack of aging do not lead to their exposure as vampires to the general public. Some of them appear to attempt to take on identities within the human world and exist alongside humans. While others instead appear to enjoy living among humans mostly anonymously without making human attachments and then choosing to travel to new places for a change in scenery whenever the urge strikes them. There is no international vampire government or even a vampire government within specific nations. However, there have been vampire societies over the thousand years or so that the species has existed. Age is a powerful status symbol in the global vampire community. One such reason for this is because the amount of history the vampire has experienced gives them a great deal of knowledge, which translates to certain bragging rights in the community, especially when the elder vampires interact with the younger vampires, werewolves, witches, and in-the-know humans they encounter. However, the main reason why age is a status symbol in the vampire community is because a vampire's age directly correlates to how physically powerful they are. As a vampire ages, their supernatural physical and mental abilities become even stronger and more advanced as well. The sharing of blood between vampires is considered an intimate act and is not typically taken lightly. Between romantic partners, however, this is an incredibly intimate act that denotes the love between the two vampires, as well as the trust they share. |-|Attitudes Toward Humans= Vampires generally coexist with humans due to their shared origins and appearances. Humans are mostly oblivious to the existence of vampires, which makes it easier for vampires to commingle with their human cohorts without detection or exposure. Most of the few people who do know about vampires have either been killed to ensure their silence, compelled to forget their encounters with them, or, in some cases, are compelled not to speak of it to anyone, which lessens the chances that the vampire species will be exposed to the public. Attitudes of vampires towards humans vary from individual to individual. Some see humans as simply food, servants, and/or entertainment, while others feel compassion for humans, remembering their lives before becoming vampires and not wanting to cause any more harm to them than necessary, and even regarding certain humans as close friends, lovers, or family. In general, vampires are known to see humans as less compared to themselves and ultimately regard their lives as being essentially insignificant, as humans are mortal whereas vampires live forever. As a result of their immortality and the fatal violence they witness on a regular basis, the death of a human who has no significant connection to the vampire is typically a non-event for them, and is either shrugged off |-|Human Awareness= Only a handful of humans are aware of the existence of literal vampires. In history, there were periods of time where vampires were not so secret, but as of the 21st century, the majority of humans regard vampires as superstition, fiction, and myth, which is how most vampires prefer it to be, as it makes it easier for them to move through the world without detection. There are small pockets of in-the-know humans, however, and they usually are in one of two groups: either they are aware of vampires because they are acquainted with at least one of them, either due to friendship, alliance, or, in rare cases, being attacked and not compelled to forget the encounter; or, they belong to a family or are associated with an organization who hunts vampires or studies them to gain more knowledge of how they work. Powers and Abilities *'Accelerated Healing:' the ability to heal rapidly from any physical injury. Vampires recover tissue from any form of physical damage to their bodies within seconds, though they still feel the pain of a wound before it heals. Vampires can snap their bones back into place after they have been broken and have been seen to fully recover from gunshots, stab wounds, and torso impalement very quickly, so long as they had consumed a regular diet of human blood prior to the injury. Those vampires who feed on animals will still heal much faster than a human, but their injuries, especially severe ones, will take much longer to heal than a vampire who feeds on human blood. The only injury a vampire can sustain that cannot be healed on its own or by consuming more blood is a werewolf bite *'Blood Consumption:' the ability to gain power from blood and bodily fluids usually by ingestion. **'Blood Empowerment:' the ability to gain strength from blood. *'Enhanced Agility:' the ability to be drastically more agile than what is naturally possible. They have shown that they can move quickly, jump very high, climb, and run incredibly fast without difficulty or exhaustion. Vampires can jump with their super speed too. Vampires that feed on human blood can jump much higher than vampires that feed on animal blood. *'Enhanced Durability:' the ability to sustain numerous blows of internal or external assaults. Even vampires who have been shot with wooden bullets, which have a weakening effect on vampires, have been seen to continue fighting so long as they were not shot in the heart or the head. Vampires still react to physical force in a human manner, particularly young vampires, who will occasionally be affected even by human-strength-level force. Vampires can also still be stunned and dazed by strikes and trauma, though their tolerance for it will increase as they get older. *'Enhanced Endurance:' the ability to endure vastly beyond what is naturally possible. *'Enhanced Senses:' the ability to possess extremely accurate senses. **'Enhanced Hearing:' their ears pick up every single sound, and can decipher layer upon layer of noise; has the ability to pick up a conversation from a mile away in a busy city. ***'Lie Detection:' by sensing changes in heartbeat, strain in voice, etc. ***'Parabolic Hearing:' the ability to focus hearing to a certain area, or filter out everything but the wanted sound. They can hear sounds coming from several miles away, and even with their eyes closed, they can be sure that there are multiple people in a room thanks to their varied breathing patterns. They can hear the sound of a heartbeat, a pulse thudding in a vein, and words spoken too quietly or too fast for humans to detect. **'Enhanced Smell:' When a vampire hunts, he uses his sense of smell to find prey and hearing to track its movements. Vampires can smell objects several miles away in a good breeze. Smell is most intense to vampires, because one can smell the blood of his prey. By not breathing, they feel uncomfortable due to the lack of smell, though they can survive without it. As they grow older and more disciplined, vampires can learn to smell differences between the scents of various humans' blood. **'Enhanced Taste:' Vampires have a similarly enhanced sense of taste allowing them to taste flavors with much more depth and precision. They can taste the differences of particles in their atmosphere. They can also detect minute differences between similar flavors. Even as a newborn, vampires are able to taste if the human they are feeding on has recently ingested drugs or alcohol. **'Enhanced Touch:' Despite being indestructible and hard-skinned, vampires can feel the things they touch, no matter the softness; such as fur, the coolness of wind, etc. They can feel the slightest changes of temperature around them, though they are not bothered by it. They can feel the heat radiating from a human several meters away. When their skins meet sunlight, they can also feel its warmth. Physical pain is implied when their bodies are being ripped apart by something with similar supernatural strength. **'Enhanced Vision:' they can see with amazing clarity/detail, distance, or color. While running, a vampire can see and sense everything that is around them, allowing them to keep tabs of their surroundings and avoid hitting anything unnecessarily. A vampire's vision is incomparable. Everything is much sharper, and more defined as a vampire, and their vision is unhindered by darkness. As a vampire, colors are much more vibrant. ***'Night Vision:' the ability to see with little or no light. *'Enhanced Speed:' the ability to be supernaturally faster than what is naturally possible. Vampires can accelerate their movements to cover short distances in an instant, usually faster than the human eye can see. When running across long distances, they appear as vibrating blurs of motion allowing them to appear or vanish quickly and quietly. **'Enhanced Reflexes:' the ability to have reaction speeds beyond human limits. **'Speed Combat:' the ability to infuse speed with physical combat. **'Speed Throwing:' the ability to throw objects at extremely high speeds. *'Enhanced Stamina:' the ability to function for long periods of time without tiring or straining oneself. *'Enhanced Stealth:' the ability to possess extraordinary expertise in stealth. *'Enhanced Strength:' the ability to possess abnormal physical strength, which can be used to single-handedly lift even an overweight grown man high off the ground by the throat and hurl him across a long room with enough speed and force to send him through a wall. As predators of humans, vampires are naturally stronger than their prey; they generally have the advantage of superior strength when in a physical battle with a human, allowing them to restrain and manhandle grown men with relative ease. While limited, the exact limit of their strength remains vague. Another critical factor to a vampire's strength is his or her age; older vampires are stronger than younger vampires. **'Crushing:' the ability to crush or deform people or objects no matter their constitution. This can be achieved through striking opponents with enough force to break bones even by accident, or snapping necks without effort. **'Impaling:' the ability to pierce through nearly anything. Vampires mostly use this to rip out hearts of others chest. *'Fang Retraction:' the ability to possess razor-sharp fangs to feed on the living. *'Mental Manipulation:' the ability to manipulate thoughts, mindsets, and upper brain functions of others. **'Compulsion:' the ability to control the minds of others. **'Dream Manipulation:' the ability to create, shape, enter and manipulate the dreams of oneself and others, including modifying, suppressing, fabricating, influencing, manifesting, sensing, and observing dreams as well as nightmares, daydreams, etc., possibly including past ones. ***'Dream Walking:' the ability to enter the dreams of another person. **'Illusion Casting:' the ability to create, shape and manipulate illusions, causing targets to see, hear, touch, smell and/or taste things which do not actually exist or cause them to perceive things differently from what they truly are. *'Semi-Immortality:' the ability to not age and maintain eternal life and youth. A vampire stops aging once turned. Upon their transformation, vampires become immune to all conventional illness, diseases, viruses and infections. While vampires who were cancer-free as humans will be immune to cancer after they are turned. *'Shapeshifting:' the ability to transform and reshape one's body. *'Weather Manipulation:' the ability to sense, create, shape and manipulate weather. Most vampires can only use one type of element, but skilled and older vampires can use multiple elements at once. Known Bloodlines Known Vampires *Damon Salvatore *Stefan Salvatore Weaknesses Vampires are more severely affected by weaknesses the older or stronger they are. *'Broken Neck:' Breaking a vampire's neck will not kill them, but it will render in a death-like state for varying amounts of time, depending on the diet and age of the person in question. I *'Decapitation: '''The act of dismembering or removing the head of a vampire will result in death. *'Desiccation:' Vampires who abstain from blood for extended amounts of time will eventually desiccate and mummify. Witches can use magic to desiccate a vampire *'Fire:' Vampires are highly flammable and sensitive to fire, and will quickly burn and die from it if the flames are not extinguished in time. This quality has been proven to be useful in disposing of the remains of a dead vampire without any physical evidence. *'Heart Extraction:' Removing the heart of a vampire will result in permanent death. Vampires have the strength to plunge their hands right through the flesh of humans, werewolves, or other vampires, allowing them to punch their hand through the thorax of a person and pull out their heart. If it is a vampire who has been subjected to this, then they will desiccate upon their death, causing their bodies to become a grey, dry husk with their vampiric veins exposed all over their body. *'Physical Trauma: Minor physical injuries such as gunshots, stab wounds and broken bones will cause pain and also slow them down. However, this is momentary as they will heal completely within seconds so long as they haven't been weakened by other means such as vervain or werewolf bites. *'Religious Symbols: '''Stefan mentions that religious symbols (such as Christian crosses) will boost a human's mental resistance to a vampire's psychic powers tremendously, but only if the user truly believes it will protect them. *'Running Water: A vampire can not cross above running water but can tunnel beneath it. *'Sunlight:' Sunlight and UV rays burn vampires on contact, and prolonged exposure will cause them to burst into flames and die. However, this weakness can be mitigated by the use of a lapis lazuli stone enchanted with a specific protection spell by a witch for a particular vampire, which is usually affixed to jewelry, though it requires the vampire to wear the stone at all times. *'Uninvited:' A vampire cannot enter a home without an invitation from the homeowner. *'Veil Matter (Ghosts):' A vampire can not hurt and defeat a ghost. But ghosts can manifest and send a vampire to a place where they can not do more damage. *'Vervain:' Just like in the television show, vervain is harmful to a vampire and protects humans from a vampire's mind control. *'Werewolf Bite:' The bite of a werewolf, which involves injecting a toxic venom into the wound, is extremely lethal to vampires. It will cause them to hallucinate, grow severely weak and go rabid until it kills them. *'Wood:' Wounding a vampire with a wooden weapon such as wooden bullets will incapacitate them, and it will take longer for them to heal their injuries than if the wounds were caused by any other substance. Stabbing a vampire through the heart with a wooden stake will result in instantaneous and permanent death. Notes Category:Species